Yes I’ve played it a lot recently. I usually have gone 5-2 with it in the challenges. It’s great against decks like DPS and Dredge but not good against BUG due to lack of card advantage to keep up with whatever the opponent is doing. It needs 4 Gush.

Otherwise this style of deck is just dead since Hasbro just wants it to be a planeswalker game.

Rip real magic

Honestly I don’t see myself playing vintage for my own pleasure ever again unless there are drastic changes made. There are a lot more interesting games out there that deserve some love instead of this crap. Everything that once enticed me to play is now gone.

@desolutionist while WotC making the game too planeswalker-centric is a thing I will happily complain about, the viability of vintage doomsday is probably also far from what modern card design is or should be about.

@blindtherapy I think making the game PW-centric is what WotC wants to do, because that's the flavor of the game at its core - planeswalkers traveling planes to have magic duels (you being a PW).

I'm actually working on a doomsday/hermit druid/belcher/PO+tendrils hybrid, which is really doing well. It dodges all the hate that would hit any one strategy. Grave hate? Play doomsday. Counterspells? Play hermit (with therapies). Tax effects? Play Goblin charbelcher. Draw the PO? Chain off and tendrils. The mismatch of cards really doesn't matter. You got mana to cast belcher? Go off with belcher. Play a hermit? You'll mill all the doomsday and belcher chaff out of the way. Got a doomsday? Your pile ignores the belcher/hermit cards. The deck basically just plays whatever broken line it draws/mulls into. It runs 4x FoW + 2 therapies and defense grids in the SB. It has a maindeck tinker and can SB in BSC/inkwell as yet another kill plan. It can even mull to 3 and win turn 2 - land, ritual, doomsday/land, mox, hermit/vault, crypt, belcher (with any mana draw and some luck on hitting 20 non lands). Fun deck, and all possible thanks to Thassa being a 1-card win package.

It’s not even the Planeswalkers as much as it is needing to relearn the format every 3 months and/or having to sit still while the opponent takes a 20 minute PO turn. WotC doesn’t know how to make cards anymore.

I played old school yesterday and had a blast. I lost to Armageddon and couldn’t have been more content.

I observed people playing Dredge vs. PO and I guess I just don’t see the draw to that kind of format. When I originally discovered Vintage it was cool to see Stax vs. Control Slaver. Now it’s PO vs. Dredge. Where’s the incentive to be part of that?

@desolutionist The format has just gotten faster and more broken. That's the consequence of adding 1000 new cards between standard, commander, and other supplemental printings to the format each year. If you print accidentally broken only 0.5% of the time, that's 5 new busted cards in the format every year. Decks max out on the best broken (like manaless dredge with 4x free spells, dredgers, bazaars, vengevines, hollow ones, etc) or play restricted highlander.dec

But there are foils to it. Decks have become so fast and streamlined, that cards like null rod, thalia, or blood moon can just wreck an opponent. If you build with hate in mind and leverage cards that mesh with the hate, you can win a lot of more grindy games.

The format looks vastly different than years past, but it's still fun. If you are of the OS mentality, you likely enjoy knowing games will last 20 minutes and get to turn 10 before someone wins. That's not vintage anymore, though many games CAN be that slow.

It's worth noting that you probably still want 0 cards in your library when you cast Thassa's Oracle, as they can still cast whatever random removal spell they have to kill the Oracle in response to the trigger, which will most likely make your devotion to blue 0.

@desolutionist I actually quit playing for a year when it was the Stax vs Slaver meta game. I hated it so much. When I think of Vintage I remember Black Vise Prosperity and the fast Academy decks being super fun. I actually like Vintage right now, just hate MTGO. I find any Magic played in paper is just more fun.

I think if Vintage remained strictly a paper format like Old School, it would have continued to feel special. We can only hope that the format gets lost in the transition to Arena. It doesn't solve the other issues such as a critical mass of free counterspells, planeswalkers, and overpowered hatebears but it might be the best thing possible for Vintage moving forward.

I’m more excited about picking up a beta Icy Manipulator than I am for any possible new border card. The new cards are just too ugly on so many levels.

@ten-ten flashing the oracle in? it lets you pay 1U instead of UU at the downside of needing to be at 0 cards, i guess. it also gets you through a counter by making them need to counter both, but unearth does that too for less mana.